During the manufacture of ink jet print heads, difficulty is experienced in removing air bubbles from the ink flow path. The presence of such bubbles is obviously a serious detriment to the quality of the resulting print. To remove the bubbles, a priming process is used.
In the prior art, the conventional way to carry out such a priming process has been by means of a vacuum source placed in fluid communication with the orifice set to withdraw ink from the supply compartment and out through the orifice set. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,185,614, and the art discussed therein.